


At This Late Season

by Destina



Category: Brokeback Mountain (2005)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-01-09
Updated: 2006-01-09
Packaged: 2017-10-31 00:18:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/337810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Destina/pseuds/Destina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes, the only thing you have to hold on to is the thing you're terrified to let go.</p>
            </blockquote>





	At This Late Season

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to Bone and Salieri (troyswann) for beta and encouragement. Originally posted to LJ in 2006; posted to AO3 2/11/12.

It's their fourteenth late summer's excursion and they've made an art out of provisioning for the days up on the mountain: horses packed snug into trailers, bags of apples and coffee, cigarettes, one cup and plate apiece, simple as it always was. Sometimes Ennis brings beans and warms them in the can, which makes Jack wonder if he's thinking back to those days when the weather was a fickle bitch conspiring to keep them from warm food and a full belly after a hard day's work. "I know you don't want no more beans," Ennis will say, smiling like the joke is new, and Jack smiles back, missing all the jokes they didn't tell in the months between. 

The fishing tackle mostly stays in the truck bed, though sometimes they catch their supper and eat it, no frills no fuss, after charring it black in the bottom of a cast-iron pan. They never catch more than they can eat, because taking the catch home with them wasn't what they came for. Jack brings extra smokes to share on the long restful evenings, with the creek rushing by them as fast as it can go on its way down to nowhere and the night sky lit with stars he should be sick of by now. They know this place by heart; they've come up near this time each August, wandering through pastures where the land is grazed out and bare. 

They sit quiet after dinner, legs stretched out long toward the fire and hats pulled down brim-low over their eyes. Jack swears he can hear the sheep bleating back from memory, can even see Ennis's fire out over the sloped hill where the tops of the trees intersect the sky. "Those was good times, friend," he says, and Ennis nods. It seems to Jack that more and more, the past sharpens and takes on the taint of a wistful story, the kind he read to his kid once, before he was too old to care about such fanciful things. 

Ennis takes a draw from a half-wasted cigarette and passes it back, his fingers lingering against Jack's the way they always do. 

The second day up, they hit the lake, wagering that maybe they're early enough to find some warmth left in the deep blue water. Of course they'd forgotten how the lake holds the chill, as they were gone just long enough to have put the last shock out of their minds. The cold nearly flays Jack's skin straight off his bones as he hits the water, and Ennis hollers behind him, a whoop and a spluttering gasp of pain, as though his heart has stopped just beneath the soft glass surface of the water. "Goddamn cold," he says through chattering teeth. Jack wants to agree, but Ennis is swimming for shore, churning up the lake with his fists like he's whaling on an enemy. Jack's sight is full of the things he carries away from the campfire each season, and words don't make that picture whole. Ennis taught him that, many summers ago. 

Later, when Jack can't get warm, he moves closer to the fire, and then farther away, into Ennis's embrace, where comfort waits. He shivers some, but Ennis knows a thing or two about stoking a fire. His hands are sandpaper on Jack's skin, hard work skimming sharp over an easier life, but he catches Jack's quick breaths with his own rough kisses and gives such pleasure as it's in his understanding to give. Ennis inside him is always a revelation, as much as anything about Ennis can be a revelation to Jack after so much time passed in this pursuit. 

Ennis chokes out Jack's name, the only word he ever says that way, though his arms tighten around Jack and his face touches the back of Jack's neck, burrowing close. In the cold dark, a sweet slow pang of hunger goes through Jack's belly, counter to the pleasure, and he thinks of Mexico's soft sands, of sunshine, and wonders what that might be like, the sun hot on his back and Ennis fucking him there on his hands and knees, the pain of it like joy. But he doesn't say it, ever, because he knows the look that'll come over Ennis's face, the way he'll turn down and away, and this is so much better than that. He's quiet in the circle of Ennis's arms, in their accustomed way, and he sleeps solid with the wind bringing down the sky in gusts and torrents. 

Over fried eggs and hot coffee in the morning, Ennis asks about Jack's kid, wanting to know if he's still got those problems with school. Jack doesn't tell him he hasn't thought about his son the last few days because he supposes maybe Ennis isn't that way with his girls, that he loves them all the time and with his whole heart. It gives him a little envy he doesn't know how to manage, so he tamps it down and passes the whiskey and lets himself have a little pride in his boy, though all the credit is Lureen's to take. He and Ennis still chew it all over, the wives, the women, their lives, though their failures lurk considerable large in the background, as cold and distant as the mountain's shadow. There's a lot Jack wants to tell Ennis to see what he'll say, but none of it is about his family or his in-laws or even his broken dreams of riding the bulls, and has more to do with distant places and old wants, so he keeps those thoughts to himself. 

The coyotes come that night, yipping around the fire's edges, but since he and Ennis are otherwise occupied, Jack lets them pass in peace. 

They ride up to the high pasture mid-week. Ennis waits for Jack to take out the harmonica, and when it doesn't appear, he makes mention of it in a tone he saves for lame horses just about to go to glue. "You goin to blow some tuneless music on that thing? I know you brung it." 

"Nah, you hate it." The thing is like a hot brand in his pocket. 

"I developed a tolerance for it some years back. Had to." Ennis eyes the horizon, where the deep blue of mid-day is giving way to storm clouds, great angry piles of them sitting heavy on the mountain. Jack grins sideways and reaches for the instrument, and they sing their way up the mountain, raspy songs with bawdy nonsensical lyrics they save for each other since there's no one else to try them out on. 

Near the high end of a trail-less hill, Ennis pulls up short, dismounts, one hand on his saddle still, as if he is thinking it over. Jack swings down easy, heels of his boots striking mud and sinking, and then Ennis moves, pushes, so they fall to the ground together, rolling in the wet earth which smells of horse and sheep and the fine scent of late summer rain, with the tang of wild onions subtle beneath. It's the open sky Jack loves, the shifting glory of the sun as it runs to hide behind the clouds, while Ennis opens his shirt and lays him bare. He feels all his mended broken bones now, every one aching resolutely, the high price of a youth on a bull's back, a dear cost for such a pointless stab at fame. Ennis raises his head, looks deep into Jack's face in that peculiar searching way before putting his mouth to Jack's, and Jack loops an arm around his neck, pulls him closer, wants that fierceness in Ennis to come into him to ease the ache of time passing. Like sparks from a low-banked fire, he feels the pain ease, Ennis's mouth warm on his, his body heavy, pressing all the broken edges back together with his hands. This is how it's best, for Jack; this is all he thinks about, in the long days between. 

Days pass quicker than either of them would have liked, until one morning they drink the last of the coffee, hunkered down on a log by the dying fire. "Got us a nice spread, no land, just a four-corner house, good and respectable," Jack says, referring to the new house Lureen wanted and got. He doesn't ask Ennis about his latest place, as he knows Ennis is a saddle bum in the truest sense, only wanting to be near his kids in that little town Jack hates with all his being, though he can't say so to Ennis. 

Ennis nods, his gaze cast down into the bottom of the cup, curled tight in on himself in a way Jack knows, has seen for the better part of twenty years. Ennis is already in motion, has hit the road and is traveling before their gear is stowed and the horses loaded up. His mind is a million miles away. 

This time, the set of Ennis's shoulders catches Jack wrong, and he has a moment's terrible fear they won't see each other like this again. It's been regular as clockwork all these years, right as rain, but now he's afraid. He puts his cup down, sets his hands to the sides of him, digs his fingers into the log and hangs on. Some noise escapes him, maybe, which isn't what he wanted, but it brings Ennis's attention to bear on him and then Ennis kneels beside him, reaches up, finds the curve of Jack's face with his hand. For a moment Jack closes his eyes, falls into a sensation of time drifting, but when he opens them, Ennis is still there, his face lined with worry. 

Jack works up a smile, just for the touch of Ennis's thumb to its curve at the corner of his mouth, and swallows all the things bursting out of him, forces them to lie down quiet, where they belong. Ennis's face is a study, but he takes his hand away and pulls the coffee off the fire, heads down to the creek to wash out the remnants. 

They part as they always do, embracing one last time with a smile and a clap on the back, I'll see you soon, friend, and then off in two different directions, each smile fading as the miles pile on. Ennis pulls out first, never looks back. Jack sits in his truck, hands clasped firm around the steering wheel until Ennis is a dot in the rearview mirror, and feels what he always feels, though putting a name to it is long past useful. 

When the twisting pain fades, he puts his head down, his hands flexing up, fingers uncurling, then curling back again, and he sets his jaw. If things had been different, they would've had a place up on the ridge, or maybe a few hundred head of cattle deep in the middle of nowhere, and work they could get their hands around, a life they shaped instead of one that shaped them. But Ennis told him once that ain't the way of things, and Jack believed him. 

Fourteen hours' drive ahead, nothing but open road and dirt. Jack switches on the radio and finds a station where there's not too much static, the voice of a woman caterwauling a song about someplace he's never been, and sets out toward home. 

~end~

**Author's Note:**

> Title of this piece is taken from a phrase in Brokeback Mountain, the story by E. Annie Proulx.


End file.
